


The Light Of Other Days

by calculatingthestars



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Parabatai, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 23:41:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6880294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calculatingthestars/pseuds/calculatingthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As parabatai, adopted brothers Jace and Alec get caught up in a fervor after battle and commit the crime of <i>eros</i>. In an effort to conceal what has happened from the eyes of the Clave, Maryse and Robert send Alec to live in another Institute, forbidding the two from further communication. Now, five years after the Mortal War has ended, Jace Lightwood runs the New York Institute with his fiancée Clary Fairchild. All is well until a rising threat leads him to liaise with the Lisbon Institute, and an old friend comes back into his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. THEN

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a poem of the same name by Thomas Moore. 
> 
> [Cover graphic here.](http://ourheartsbeatas1.tumblr.com/post/144487963423/title-the-light-of-other-days-1-author) This is primarily show!verse, though I do fall back on the movie and books for information when necessary, (i.e. if the show doesn’t explain/hasn’t shown something yet, chances are that I’ve drawn from the source material and/or made educated guesses about where it might go). That said, I’ve taken liberties with some concepts, specifically (but not limited to) the parabatai bond. Canon sources are a bit conflicting regarding what the bond entails and how powerful it is, so I’ve done my best to take in all of the information I’ve seen about it and smush it all together into something that works in the context of the story that I wanted to tell. Likewise, I’ve upped the age limit for the parabatai bond to twenty instead of eighteen, for reasons of sexual consent and maturity. To my knowledge, the show hasn’t explicitly stated by exactly how much older Alec is than Jace, so I’ve taken their one year age gap from the books.

_“There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lovers enter the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in a new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.”_

-‘The English Patient’, Michael Ondaatje

_\-----_

When Jace is eighteen and Alec is nineteen, they become parabatai.

They step into the ring of fire, flames licking at their skin, eyes wide as they stare at each other across the chamber. The council watches impassively as silent witnesses and the tension in the room is palpable, pressing against Jace’s lungs, into the whites of his eyes, and his hand is gripping his stele so tightly that he thinks he might snap it in half.

Alec holds up his hand, palm inwards, and Jace follows suit. A bead of sweat trickles down his temple as he stands rooted to the spot, and he can see Alec’s lips moving, shaping familiar words, and Jace repeats them automatically.

“… _return from following after thee_ …” He comes in at the middle and Alec’s serious expression softens somewhat, his lips tugging up into the smallest of _smiles_.

Jace ducks his head, choking back the manic, inappropriate chuckle that rises from his chest. Alec’s hand is on his shoulder then, a reassuring weight, and he looks up into solemn eyes and nods.

 _I’m ready_.

Jace squares his shoulders and raises his arm, joining the rune etched on the back of his hand to Alec’s. This time, they say the oath together.

“ _Entreat me not to leave thee,_  
Or return from following after thee—  
For whither thou goest, I will go,  
And where thou lodgest, I will lodge.  
Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.  
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.  
The Angel do so to me, and more also,  
If aught but death part thee and me.”

Jace removes his shirt first, and Alec hesitates only slightly before he takes a knee beside him, carefully drawing the parabatai rune on his left hip. His stele burns into Jace’s skin and he feels it more acutely than any rune he’s ever worn—permanent or otherwise—and by the time it’s over, he realizes he’s been holding his breath the entire time.

Alec gets up and Jace looks down at it in wonder; it’s perfectly shaped, the edges as fine as any artist could ever make. He touches it reverently as Alec removes his own shirt, waiting for his answering mark.

They’d talked about where they’d wanted their runes the night before, and Alec had asked for it to be placed on his torso, a few inches beneath his ribs. It’s a good spot, close to the heart but still leaving room for other runes should they need more power, and Jace kneels, hand shaking slightly as he prepares to touch his stele to Alec’s skin.

His draftsmanship has never been the best, but he’d practiced this over and over beforehand, knows that he can make it look nearly as perfect as Alec’s had been. Taking a breath, Jace touches the stele to his skin and simultaneously reaches up with his free hand, lays it flat against the planes of his stomach for balance. Alec, however, _jerks_ at the touch, not enough to be too noticeable but certainly enough to cause the already nervous Jace to _startle_.

_His stele slips._

For a moment there’s only shocked horror as Jace realizes that he’s inadvertently laid down the first stroke of the parabatai rune, and it. Is. _Low_.

Far lower than he’d originally planned, far lower than Alec had _asked_ for, and Jace looks from his face to the partial rune and then back again.

“ _Uh_ —“

The look on Alec’s face is _telling_ , and Jace has never seen an expression quite so _pinched_. “Go on,” he says, and even though he whispers, Jace can tell that his teeth are gritted as he speaks.

He gets on with it, completing the top half of the rune easily enough, but as he moves to draw the last stroke at the bottom, he pauses, rubs the back of his neck. “ _Alec…_ ” he whispers. “I need a little more room.”

Hazel eyes drill holes into the back of Jace’s skull as Alec’s jaw clenches, and his entire body is _tense_ as he flicks the top button of his pants open— _see, this is why Jace had_ told _him to wear the jeans that rode lower on his hips_ —and he tugs the waistband down just enough to reveal the last half inch of skin that Jace needs.

Someone on the council clears their throat, and Jace doesn’t dare look at Alec’s face as he finishes the last stroke in record time. When he’s done, he gets to his feet quickly, pocketing the stele as he finally dares to look at his parabatai, hoping that his contrition is evident on his face. But Alec is pointedly buttoning his pants and slipping his shirt back over his head, and Jace follows suit, wondering if anything at all has changed—

He’s barely able to finish the thought before he _feels_ it.

 _Warmth_.

A glow that radiates from his chest—no, not his chest, his _heart_ —and permeates every part of him, infusing his limbs, his fingers, the ends of his hair. It’s strange and unfamiliar but instinct tells Jace that it won’t harm him, and so he stands there, eyes wide, allowing it to go wash over him completely before it slowly starts to ebb away.

By the time it’s gone, it leaves only the sound of a beating heart, faintly louder than his own, and Jace meets Alec’s eyes over the handful of inches separating them and he knows unequivocally that it’s _his_.

_Parabatai._

…

When Jace is eighteen and Alec is nineteen, they have sex for the first time.

They’re fresh off of a demon hunt, breathless and excited, high on adrenaline and their own immortality.

 _In battle, our hearts beat as one_ , Jace thinks giddily. He shrugs off his jacket and a cloud of ash flies up as he dumps it onto his bedroom floor. “That was perfect,” he crows. “You— _We_ were perfect. I swear, I could feel _your_ hand holding my dagger when I pinned that Shax demon to the brownstone. I don’t think we’ve ever been this _synced_.”

Alec leans against the closed door, far more sedate in his reaction but Jace knows that he’s no less affected. The color is high in his parabatai’s cheeks, his eyes shining brightly.

“Practice makes perfect,” he says, and finally he smiles, the act lighting up his whole face. Boyish excitement doesn’t suit him quite as much as it does Jace, but his parabatai thinks him no less becoming for it.

They share the moment; Jace seated on the edge of his bed, Alec across the room, and there’s a good six feet of distance between them but they might as well have been standing right in front of each other for all that it affects them. “Can you feel that?” Jace asks dreamily, and he’s got his eyes fixed on nothing, his hand pressed to the left side of his chest. “ _Alec…?_ ”

Something in the room shifts then, “ _Come feel_.”

And Alec knows that this is a very bad idea, that he should turn around and _leave_ , but he moves towards Jace as if magnetized, the gravity of him tugging at his _core_. When he’s close enough, Jace takes his hand, puts it over his heart.

“Can you feel that?” Jace asks again, and this time his mismatched eyes are fixed on Alec’s face, his _mouth_ , and Alec nods.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, and he _can_ , because their hearts are beating in tandem, he can hear it inside his head as clearly as he can feel the steady thump under his palm.

 _Also as one, their hearts skip a beat_.

And Alec _knows_ what’s coming next, knows it as surely as he knows his own mind, but he can’t stop it any more than Jace can. He doesn’t know who moves first, but one moment he’s standing in front of Jace and in the next Alec’s on top of him on his bed, his parabatai’s hands in his hair and his tongue in his mouth, and it’s so sudden and so powerful that his mind goes _blank_.

He doesn’t know how long they kiss—roughly, _desperately_ —but somewhere along the way, clothes come off and they’re entwined on Jace’s bed. The bed that Alec has stretched out on, even shared _,_ countless times over the years, all for entirely platonic reasons, but there’s nothing at all platonic about _this_.

He’s loved Jace for all the years that he’s known him, has been _in_ love with him for nearly as long, and for the first time ever, Alec realizes that Jace might just be in love with him _back._

It’s an awful thing to know after everything he’s gone through to conceal his true feelings, but it’s too late now because there’s no turning back, and so Alec just throws himself into it with everything he _has_.

They barely know what they’re doing, the first time; Jace fumbles with the mechanics of it and they slide together like minnows, breathless and slick and wanting. Alec gets him off with his mouth and his hands, tentative in his touch and far too gentle, while Jace is wildfire, touching and kissing him so enthusiastically that it makes Alec groan in a mix of pleasure/pain.

It’s not perfect, far from it, but it changes them both in a way that they can’t come back from. As if his life can be delineated by a wall going through this night, separating the years— _before_ he knew Jace was _his_ , and everything _after that_.

It’s a sobering thought, and Alec experiences a brief flash of panic when he wonders if this is because of their _bond_ , if his own impure love for Jace has bled into his parabatai, had _infected_ him somehow—

 “I can hear you worrying from here,” his parabatai mumbles, and he lays his head against Alec’s chest, right above his heart. “ _Don’t_.”

“How can you say that?” Alec asks, and he doesn’t have the strength to push him away but he does close his eyes, the weight of what they’ve done sinking into his veins like poison.

“It is what it is,” Jase says, as certain and unapologetic as always. Alec _envies_ him. “I don’t want to go back to the way things were. Do you?”

His silence is all the answer that Jace needs.

“If we’re careful,” he continues. “No one will find out.”

And Alec wants to say something, to argue that this happened and they can’t change that, but that it never should again. But he can’t get the words out because he’s selfish and it’s the last thing he wants, and he can’t help but give in to Jace because really, giving in to Jace is just what he _does_.

So against Alec’s better judgment, they carry on.

 _Months pass_. They’re discreet about their relationship, visiting each other’s rooms well after everyone else has retired, keeping their excitement after each mission tightly bound. Alec learns what it’s like to have a lover for the first time, learns what it’s like to fuck and be fucked, memorizes the dips and planes of Jace’s body and _oh_ , his parabatai learns every inch of _him_ , too.

It’s perfect, for a time, this secret little bubble of theirs, and after a while the constant dread inside of Alec abates, and he allows himself to fantasize that maybe, just maybe, they can actually pull this off.

And then they get _careless_.

…

When Jace is eighteen, they take his parabatai away from him.

Their parents find out about their indiscretions in the most innocuous fashion—there are no dramatic reveals, no doors forgotten to be locked.

No, what happens is this: _Alec gets hurt_.

They’re on border duty, clearing out a handful of raveners that are apparently testing the strength of their wards. It’s a milk run; Izzy hadn’t even bothered to join them. They dispose of almost all of them easily enough, and Jace isn’t even breathing hard by the time they’re done. He turns back to Alec just as one of the demons— _why hadn’t he seen it?_ —burrows out from a freshly dug grave, leaping for his back, and Alec shoves him out of the way as the demon’s claws rake down his torso.

Jace is on the ravener at once, cutting it in half as Alec stumbles, takes a knee. They’re both shaking as Jace pulls his shirt open, pulling out his stele so that he can activate his _iratze_. It works almost instantaneously; the wound had been cosmetic at best, but Jace is badly shaken nonetheless.

It’s the first time one of them has gotten moderately injured since becoming parabatai, and suddenly immortality has never felt further away. Alec can see all of this and more cross Jace’s face, and so he reaches up to touch his cheek, gently pulling his parabatai close.

And Alec kisses him.

Just the barest brush of lips against his, a press so soft that it’s barely anything at all. It’s nothing and it’s everything, and Jace grips his wrist so very, very tightly.

“I’m okay,” Alec says. “I’m still here.”

Jace nods, still unable to speak, and they sit there for a while, kneeling on the wet earth and simply existing.

_Maryse sees everything._

She sees it from the awning of the Institute steps—she’d gone out to check on them and wishes she _hadn’t_ — because she can see how her sons _hold_ each other, how desperately Jace embraces Alec when he sees him wounded. And, of course, she sees the _kiss_.

Hardly passionate, but so painfully _intimate_ that Maryse feels, _knows_ , that she’s intruding on a moment between lovers.

She turns on her heel and walks back into the Institute, chin held high and her features deliberately impassive.

The following night, she calls a family meeting.

“Everyone’s so serious,” Isabelle comments as she takes a seat beside Alec on the couch. “Everything okay?”

There is silence as Maryse steps up behind Robert, her hand on her husband’s shoulder. Alec could have been made from _stone_ , he’s so still, and beside him, Jace fidgets with his stele. They have an idea what this is about, _of course_ they do, but they’re still hoping against hope that maybe, it could be about something else. _Anything else._

“Alexander, Jonathan,“ Robert says finally. “ _We know._ ”

And just like that, it’s _over_.

Their parents tell them that it’s for their own good, that the shame of what they’ve done will never come to light if only they stop it _right now_ , before someone _else_ notices how close they are and reports it to the Clave.

Isabelle doesn’t say a word but she looks at her brothers with sympathy, and Alec hasn’t moved an inch but his hands are clenched so tightly that his knuckles are white. And Jace… Like Alec, he says nothing, but everyone can see from the set of his jaw and the expression on his face that he _can’t_ , _won’t_ be parted from Alec. His heels are dug into the carpet and he looks ready for a _fight_ , and as soon as Maryse finishes speaking, he opens his mouth to protest, but his parabatai beats him to it.

“I’ll leave,” Alec says, and Jace’s head snaps towards him.

“ _What?_ ”

“I’ll leave,” Alec says again, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I was considering applying to an institute abroad next year; if you help me, I’m certain that you can expedite the paperwork.”

And this is the first time that Jace has heard this, _any of this_ , and his head whips from Alec to their parents. “ _For how long?_ ”

There’s a moment where Maryse’s guard drops as she looks at her eldest son, and her dark eyes are filled with an emotion that Jace can’t quite interpret. Then she nods once, _sharply_ , and Alec takes it for the dismissal that it is.

He gets up and leaves the room without another word, and Jace is after him in an instant, ignoring Robert’s request for him to _wait_.

He catches up to his parabatai in his room and finds Alec waiting for him.

“Why did you do that?” Jace demands, slamming the door shut. “ _Why didn’t you fight for us?_ ”

His hands are balled into fists and he’s so tightly coiled that he could snap at any moment, but Alec doesn’t say anything at all, just goes to him and tries to put his arms around him. Jace won’t have it, of course, he’s too angry, and he shoves Alec away as hard as he can.

“ _No,_ ” Jace shouts, and he stabs a finger at him. “ _You’re_ letting them _do_ this to us. _Why?_ ”

He can’t lose Alec. _He can’t lose Alec_. The thought that his parabatai would leave _willingly_ , that he’d _suggest_ it--

This time, when Alec tries to hold him, Jace actually throws a _punch_. His parabatai rolls with it but it has to have hurt, _it has to,_ but he still doesn’t lift a finger even though Jace’s hands are fisted into his collar and angry tears have filled his eyes.

“ _I hate you_ ,” he says. “ _I hate you for doing this to us._ ”

And this time, it’s he who pulls Alec in, their mouths meeting in a bruising kiss. It’s as if Alec is trying to crush him against his body, he’s holding him so tightly, and Jace _lets_ him, closing his eyes as he bites at his lower lip, vicious even now, and everything about it is desperate, _furious_.

They stop only when Jace can’t bear it anymore, shoving Alec off of him as he drags air into his aching lungs. They stare at each other and Jace knows that he can’t change his parabatai’s decision, knows by the set of his jaw and the look in his eye that Alec has _made up his mind_.

It’s unconscionable, impossible, and Jace wants to _hit_ him again, _badly_. “I can’t do this right now,” he says. “I can’t look at you.”

He turns on his heel and leaves, locks himself in his room for the rest of the night. Tomorrow, he’ll pull himself together. Talk to their parents, make his case. Jace would happily go back to the way they used to be if it meant that Alec could stay. Surely, Robert and Maryse would be able to see that; they can’t want their eldest son to leave any more than Jace does.

That night, his dreams are fitful. His heart is heavy and it translates; Jace dreams of being smothered by the tide, aching for breath but receiving only the sting of salt water in return. It hurts him like a physical thing, like someone has reached into his chest and seized his capacity to breathe, and when he wakes up, moonlight is streaming through the window and his cheeks are wet.

By the next morning, Alec is _gone_.

…

When Jace is eighteen, his heart breaks.

He begs Isabelle to tell him where Alec is, but she tells him that she _can’t_. “He doesn’t want you to know,” she says, trying to be gentle. “But…”

She hesitates, bites her lip. “No one can stop you from writing to him.”

So Jace _does_.

He sends dozens of letters, one after the other, watching them burn up in fire and flame. _Please come home. I’m sorry. I love you. I never meant to hurt you. If you come home, I promise not to do it again. Please come home. Please please please._

He feels sick, mad with grief and guilt, and with each unanswered letter his heart leadens. It’s deadweight, a thing in his chest that has no purpose, and eventually the pain dulls to an ache that can only be described as _familiar_.

At night, he touches his parabatai mark and closes his eyes. There’s an ache in his bones, fever in his skin, but there’s nothing at the other end. As if he’s holding out a hand into the abyss and where before there was warmth, a _heartbeat_ , now there is only _silence_.

The bitterness he feels is a companion of sorts, until finally, one day, Jace touches the faded rune at his waist and does not flinch.

He is strong because he has to be, and he cannot allow himself to falter. He tells himself this, over and over, long enough and hard enough and often enough; in time, he even starts to _believe_ it.

And when Jace is twenty, he meets Clary Fairchild.


	2. NOW

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover graphic here. ](http://ourheartsbeatas1.tumblr.com/post/147269286358/title-the-light-of-other-days-2-author)
> 
> I can only apologize for how long this next chapter took me to write, but suffice to say that this fic has not been abandoned in any way, shape or form. It took me a while to conjure the exact words and pacing I wanted for this, and it's finally in a form that I'm comfortable enough to publish. Hopefully it was worth the wait!

_“From this point on, she whispered, we will either find or lose our souls.”_

-‘The English Patient’, Michael Ondaatje

 

The warlock has feathers for hair.

They’re sparkling, iridescent, and they catch the light whenever she moves. _Elisabet Eve_. Jace meets her at a _club_ —and doesn’t _that_ take him back—and the dress she’s wearing has a slit so high up that Jace catches a glimpse of the jeweled garter on her stockinged feet. Her eyes are an inhuman shade of blue, spots like the marks on butterfly wings curving gracefully from temple to chin, and her expression tells him _exactly_ what she thinks about _nephilim_.

Jace leans forward, places a hand flat on the table of her private booth. “I don’t have time for games,” he says, voice low. The hum of conversation mixes with the beat of the music, the dull pounding giving him a headache. “Your fire message said that you had information about the Triskelion; do you or don’t you?”

 “I do,” Eve replies in heavily accented English. “But the question remains: do _you_ have what _I_ want?”

In response, Jace withdraws a small pouch from his inner pocket, holding it between his middle and index fingers. “You get paid if I decide the information that you have is worth it,” he replies. “I’ve come a long way for this meeting; my patience is wearing _thin_.”

Her eyes glitter. “No doubt,” she says. “Show me, then. What do you have on them?”

There’s a pregnant pause as Jace regards her; the high warlock of Brooklyn himself had inspected his only lead and been able to conjure nothing, he highly doubts that someone so anonymous could possibly come up with something _better_.

Eve sees the look on his face and purses her lips. “If you had other options, you would not have come,” she says. “Perhaps it is _you_ who are wasting _my_ time, hm?”

Jace’s lips thin and he pulls out a cloth-wrapped bundle from the inside pocket of his jacket, placing it on the table between them. He unfolds it slowly, his eyes trained on her face, and keeps it well out of her reach. “Their attacks are escalating,” he says. “They use demons to do their dirty work for them, and they hang back and watch it play out. One of our archers managed to graze one and they dropped this before they fled.”

He tilts the handle, shows her the _mark_. “You know what it’s _called_ ,” he says. “Do you know who’s behind it?”

Perhaps he imagines it, but it seems as if her breath catches when the light hits the raised edges of the Triskelion, and she nods once, sharply.

“I know it,” she says, but her luminous eyes dart towards the bar before settling back on Jace, and she folds in on herself, _tensing_. “It isn’t safe to talk here.” Her gaze flickers to the doorway. “Meet me around the back in fifteen minutes; my lair is far better warded for conversations of this nature.”

She gets up in a swirl of skirts before Jace can protest, and he takes his time rewrapping the weapon and putting it back into his pocket. The drink he’d gotten is just for show; he watches as condensation forms on the outside of the glass and leaves it, untouched, when enough time has passed.

The dance floor is a pulsing mass of Downworlders and Jace has to alternately shove and squeeze his way past the throng, and by the time he reaches the back entrance, whatever patience he had left is non-existent.

Skirting his way past a couple passionately entwined, he turns the latch on the exit and ducks outside, the night air making his breath turn to smoke.

“ _Eve,_ ” he calls out impatiently, but that’s all he manages to get out before a stinger embeds itself into the spot where his head had been just moments before.

Jace swears under his breath as he abruptly reverses his momentum, his back hitting the metal door just as the stinger withdraws from the deep pit that it had just cut into the wall. One hand goes for the seraph blade at his waist and the other turns the latch, but there’s no luck to be had there; the door is securely _locked_.

He spares himself a moment to wonder if he’d just walked into a trap, and Jace throws himself forward as the stinger lashes out once more, spitting acid from the darkness and catching the sleeve of his jacket.

_What is it?_

Normally the _stinger_ would be a dead giveaway, but judging from the bulk that’s moving in the darkness, it’s far too big to be a ravener, and it moves so quickly that he can barely track it. The next time it weaves out from the darkness, Jace brings his blade up to meet it, the scrape of _adamas_ skimming against its thick hide making the hair rise on the back of his neck.

 _It doesn’t cut through_.

The realization is as unsettling as it is surprising, and Jace is so preoccupied with the information that he almost trips over the _body_. The warlock is lying in a pool of her own blood but he has no time to check for a _pulse_ , the skittering sound of claws emerging from the darkened alley.

Jace backs away until the club’s solid wall is behind him, holding his blade out as the demon finally emerges into the circle of light cast by a lone incandescent bulb. It turns out that his first guess hadn’t been that far off. It _is_ a ravener, several times the size of a normal adult and easily the largest that Jace has ever seen, massive in his field of vision as he grits his teeth and tenses himself for its charge.

Despite its bulk, the demon moves just as fast as any of its normal-sized kin do, and it’s all he can do to evade the insect-like creature that hurtles towards him from the darkness. The space is cramped and works to his disadvantage; a cut blossoming on his cheek as the stinger comes in again and again.

Bits of cement and brick fly up as Jace tries to get out from the corner he’s pinned in, his blade deflecting the talons as much as it mounts his only _offense_.

The demon is unlike anything he’s ever encountered before, the hide so slippery that adamas does nothing to penetrate it, and it’s only sheer luck that he’s thrown to the ground in an effort to evade getting skewered, his eyes widening as he beholds a chitinous slide of plate in its underbelly.

Far too small a gap to be an advantage in a normal ravener, but on this one, it’s almost three inches wide and about a foot long across the seam of it. It isn’t much considering how fast the damned thing is moving, but it’s enough to give him a _chance_.

Jace throws himself to the side and manages to roll out from under the beast as its stinger comes in again, coming so close that it manages to slice through the back of his leather jacket. He doesn’t have the time to mourn the loss, gathering himself and leaping over and above the demon.

He lands hard behind it, using the alley wall to kick himself into a hard roll beneath, already bringing his blade up as he skids between its blade-like legs.

There’s a split-second where the adamas hits nothing but carapace, but then Jace twists his hand and it _enters_ , finally finding purchase within the meat of the creature. It lets out a horrible scream; all high-pitched agony and flailing limbs, and Jace keeps his place and shoves the blade further _in_.

By the time it’s over, he’s covered in a wash of ichor, having barely managed to get himself out from under the demon as its remaining death throes decimate the rest of the alley.

He’s leaning against the wall and futilely trying to wipe demon muck from his blade, about to reach for his stele when a noise behind him makes him _start_.

“Go out the front—“ he starts to say, but the back door to the club opens fully anyway, the couple he’d seen earlier stepping out into the alley. This time, there’s no pretense. Their maws unfurl to reveal razor sharp teeth; shapeshifters, though at least they don’t look any more deadly than the regular ones do.

Jace is bleeding from about four different places, none of them too serious. “I could go on all night,” he says, and hefts his blade.

His smirk lasts about as long as it takes for half a dozen more to drop down from the roof, landing in the mess of sticky ash that the mutant ravener had left, effectively blocking his only other exit.

His mouth thins. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you all to take turns?” he says, and pulls a dagger from his belt as he holds his weapons out, attempting to cover himself from both sides.

 _Backup_. Clary had told him to take Raj with him but he’d brushed her off, confident that the warlock hadn’t been a _hostile_.

As he cuts into an eidolon whilst two jump him from behind, Jace thinks: _I really should’ve listened to her_.

He kicks out fiercely and manages to dislodge one, slamming them both back against the crumbling wall and nearly tripping over an overturned garbage bin. He’s killed two of them already but more are still _coming_ , pouring out of the club’s back entrance as if they can sense a _kill_.

**_Drop_ ** **.**

The _instinct_ to do so comes unbidden, _unrelenting_ , and even though there’s no strategic advantage to it, Jace does so, pitching himself forward and taking the eidolon ripping into his back with him. There’s a loud thump as an _arrow_ slices through the air towards him, skewering the demon holding him down and reducing it to _ash_.

Jace doesn’t have to _look_ to know who it belongs to. He can feel it in the beat of his heart, the electricity zinging across his skin.

_Alec._

Their parabatai bond springs to life for the first time in seven long years, the force of it very nearly taking Jace’s breath away. He can feel Alec through it, can feel his heartbeat as surely as his own, the pads of his fingers against the bowstring, the callus on his right thumb.

Jace wants to throw up but Alec won’t let him; his parabatai is _ice_ , impassive underneath the current of his _being_ , and there is only one word that repeats in his mind, over and over: _fight_.

_So Jace does._

Even with Alec here, even with their parabatai bond allowing them to fight as a unit, it’s _close_. Far too close for comfort, and though Jace fights with his seraph blades and whatever he can get his hands on, he nearly loses his head on three separate occasions. Alec covers him beautifully from his perch on the fire escape above, but even he can only be in one place at a time, and by the time it’s over, the warlock with the information Jace had so desperately needed is very obviously _dead_. He checks for a pulse anyway, mouth a grim line as he turns over her body and sees the stinger wound under her ribs.

_If it had ended sooner, they might have had a chance…_

The alley is covered with a thick layer of ash and a large cloud of it rises up as Alec finally drops down from the fire escape, the rusted metal grate creaking against his weight.

Jace tenses, almost afraid to turn towards him. _Seven years_ , he thinks. He hasn’t seen his parabatai in seven years and his heart is beating so hard that he can feel it thumping in his chest, and Alec—

Alec’s hazel eyes are so dilated that they’re almost black, and when Jace finally gets to his feet and meets his gaze, the force of it takes his breath away. There’s a maelstrom there, in the way he’s _looking_ at him, and every page of their _history_ unfurls like a tidal wave, Jace’s knees buckling under the onslaught.

He would’ve fallen if Alec had not caught him, crossing the distance between them in three long strides as his hand fists into his shirt. His parabatai holds him at arm’s length but keeps him up nonetheless, bracing him, and Jace feels like he’s on fire wherever they’re _touching_ , like he could burn up from the inside out.

 _‘Get your hands off of me,_ ’ he wants to say. ‘ _You left me_. How could you leave me?’ Because after all these years, he’s still _hurt_ and he’s still _angry,_ but Jace doesn’t say any of that.

Instead, the only thing that passes through his lips when he opens his mouth to speak is a low groan, and instead of shoving Alec’s hand away, he ends up grabbing a fistful of his jacket and pulling him forward instead.

Their mouths meet and the stubble on Alec’s chin scrapes against Jace’s face, harsh and patchy, and Alec resists only a little before he gives in, presses the bulk of himself against Jace and devours his mouth. There’s a pipe digging into Jace’s back and Alec’s teeth are sharp against his lower lip, but his hands are clawing against his parabatai’s back and Jace tries to pull him _closer, closer_. There’s fire in him, he’s bleeding from half a dozen wounds and his parabatai is hardly _gentle_ , but none of that matters because Alec has shoved a leg between his thighs and Jace is, _oh fuck_ , he’s rubbing himself against it, riding it shamelessly and he can _feel_ Alec through his jeans, he’s so hard for him, Angel, he _wants_ it, wants to get on his knees for him right here, right in the middle of demon ash and muck–

_Jace shoves him away._

It takes nothing short of a Herculean effort, his breathing ragged as he staggers without Alec’s body to hold him up. His breath is slamming into his chest and he’s shaking, trembling with the force of how much he _wants_ him, and Jace turns away, staggers a few feet away and drives a fist into the crumbling cement. It _helps_. A little. Jace does it twice more before he manages to get himself under control, his knuckles a bloody mess under his torn leather gloves.

He doesn’t dare look at Alec until he’s certain that he has himself under control again, and his parabatai rune is searing against his side. He can’t feel Alec through it anymore, though—a small _mercy_ —and when Jace straightens, his parabatai stands before him, his bow clutched in a white-knuckled grip.

“The head of the Lisbon Institute sent me to check on you,” he says softly. They’re the first words Alec has said to him in _seven fucking years_ , and he doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or _cry_. “We should head back; Lydia will want to know what happened.”

The _hurt_ is a physical thing, _bright and sharp and bloody,_ but Jace forces himself to nod.

“ _Lead the way._ ”

…

Later, when he’s somewhat cleaned up and his injuries have all but faded, Jace meets Alec in Lydia Branwell’s office. It’s stark and utilitarian, a lone picture frame propped against the corner of her desk, free of clutter and dust.

Lydia herself reminds Jace a lot of his mother.

She heads the Lisbon Institute with her husband John Monteverde, a legacy similar to his own. He’d taken over leadership of the New York Institute with Clary after Maryse had retired, and though they’d decided on a long engagement, it’s really only a matter of time before they tie the knot.

He likes her immediately, appreciating the no-nonsense attitude and her attention to detail, and she’s friendly enough as she informs Jace that his rescue was due to his fiancée contacting her hours before.

“Fairchild thought you might need backup,” Lydia says, and if she notices Alec stiffening slightly in the seat beside him, she makes no comment of it. “And it appears that her concerns regarding your warlock contact were not unfounded.”

“I don’t think Eve was to blame,” Jace responds. “They obviously killed her to keep her quiet, but…” He trails off, shaking his head.

“Something doesn’t fit,” he continues. “That ravener wasn’t normal, and I’m almost certain that those eidolon were waiting for me. Why didn’t they attack when the ravener did? Why stay back? And when they saw that Eve was dead, why didn’t they just leave?”

There’s a pregnant pause before Alec finally speaks up, shifting in the chair beside his. “The ravener you fought before I arrived,” he says. “It was bigger than any adult you’ve seen before? Tough as hell and faster than the small ones?”

Jace nods. “You’ve come across it before?”

There’s a longer pause this time, his parabatai’s answer _reluctant_. “I’m investigating them for the Clave,” he says. “The first report came about a month ago; it killed two shadowhunters and wounded one pretty badly. I’ve been on it ever since.”

“It’s dead now,” Jace ventures, but Alec shakes his head.

“From what I can tell, there seems to be at least three of them running around the city,” he says grimly. “Maybe more. I can’t close the investigation until I’m sure.”

 “It appears that your interests are aligned,” Lydia says. “I would suggest that you pool your information together if you intend to continue working the Eve case. Otherwise, the Lisbon Institute would be happy to take over…?”

In spite of himself, Jace bristles. “Eve’s murder is tied to a glut of deaths well within our jurisdiction,” he says. “I can’t just leave all of our information with the Lisbon Institute’s resident investigator—“

“I’m not a resident,” Alec breaks in. “At least, not a permanent one. I’m here for the case; if it takes me elsewhere, I go elsewhere. When it’s done, I’ll move on.”

Jace frowns. “To where?”

“To wherever the Clave sends me.”

 _That sounds lonely_ , Jace wants to say, but he bites his tongue. Alec’s eyes flicker towards him, brows furrowing as if he can sense the words that he’s holding back, but their bond is silent and and Jace knows that he can only guess.

Silence reigns as Lydia’s fingers fly over the keyboard at her desk, and Jace can see his official service record reflected on the window behind her. Paperwork and bureaucracy, of course; the one thing more consistent than the hunt itself.

Lydia glances up and sees him staring, her fingers poised above the glowing keys. “I see you’ve made it official,” she says, nodding at the monitor. At Jace’s questioning look, she smiles sheepishly. “Forgive me; I’ve been following your career for some time now. Jace Wayland was always a bit of a legend back in Idris; when you took over the New York Institute, there were rumors that you’d changed your name _again_ , but I wasn’t certain.”

Her smile falters a bit when Jace says nothing, his face so impassive it could have been carved from stone. Beside him, Alec shifts in his seat, the atmosphere growing noticeably more strained.

Lydia clears her throat. “Shall I inform the Clave of the New York Institute’s cooperation in these matters, then?” she asks. “Or will you need directions to our portal room?”

“Eve’s murder is our case,” Jace says firmly. “When I get to the bottom of it, I’ll leave. Until then…” His gaze flickers towards Alec, then back to Lydia. “Cooperation seems to be the wisest course of action.”

Alec, predictably, says nothing, but Lydia looks pleased at his words.

“It’s settled then,” she says, rising and holding out her hand to Jace. He takes it, shaking it firmly.

_“Welcome to the Lisbon Institute, Jace Lightwood.”_


End file.
